Izaak Walton

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy.

I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element are made for wise men to contemplate, and for fools to pass by without consideration.

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle.

Thus use your frog...Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills;...and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.

An excellent angler, and now with God.

Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.

I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.